Siloam Inscription Memorializes Engineering Achievement

Dan Gill’s new understanding of Jerusalem’s underground water installations, including Hezekiah’s famous tunnel, raises once more the question of the significance of the monumental inscription found in the tunnel recording the meeting of the two teams of tunnelers digging from opposite directions.

This inscription is not the only ancient mention of Hezekiah’s tunnel. It is also referred to in two books of the Bible (2 Kings and 2 Chronicles), and in an apocryphal book known as Ecclesiasticus or the Wisdom of Ben Sirach.^a

But all three of these literary references reflect a distinctly different viewpoint from the inscription in the tunnel itself.